


Discordance

by TheGoldenGhost



Category: Vingt mille lieues sous les mers | Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
Genre: Angst, Gen, I know I don't usually write this kind of stuff, I think this is the only fandom where 'post-squid' is an actual timeline marker, I wanted to say 'angst with a happy ending' but it's post-squid so it isn't, Octopi & Squid, Relationship Issues, but it started as one thing and turned into something else, mentioned anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 21:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21995203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGoldenGhost/pseuds/TheGoldenGhost
Summary: A week after the fight with the squids, Nemo is restless and searching for where to go next.
Kudos: 12





	Discordance

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still working on chapter 6 of Northward Bound, don't worry! In the meantime, have another quick oneshot!
> 
> This one was originally meant to be a sort-of companion piece to Accompaniment, but it ended up standing more on its own. 
> 
> I will warn that it contains some brief suicidal ideation towards the end, though nothing too intense.

Nemo’s hands passed once over the keys of his organ, taking a moment’s comfort in their familiar smoothness before he began his melody. This instrument. He cherished it like an old friend, one that, unlike fragile human lives, was unlikely to ever be destroyed or crushed or dragged to the bottom of the sea –

His hands stilled momentarily, his mind flashing back to Lucien’s death by the squids only a week before.

One week?

He checked the clock as if he could tell what day it what just by looking at the time. Yes, one week, he was fairly sure. Taking a deep breath, he began again.

His notes were rapid, practiced, but not melodious as usual. His heart was not with his playing, and his thoughts had not stopped racing since the South Pole, but now they were even worse, so much worse. He was not able anymore to be still, always needing to be moving, doing something, preparing. Unable to sleep.

He _needed_ to sleep. He’d even started using the sleeping draughts again, something he hadn’t done in years, just to get his brain to quiet down and let his body rest. Not dreamlessly, not soundly, but rest all the same.

But even with the drugs, he was exhausted, and he knew it. His eyes were heavy now, his hands uncertain and ill-timed on the keys, but if he tried to lie down he would just stay awake, tormented by visions of Lucien’s demise, by the soreness of his body, by his pounding heart and the horrible numbness that had tightened its hold in his throat and chest like a vise and would not let go.

One week and he was not healing well from the battle. He’d wrenched his shoulder, bruised the entire right side of his body, and twisted his knee. Nothing was sprained, nothing broken. In time, he’d be fixed, he supposed. He’d been injured before, worse than this, and so physical pain barely registered with him anymore. It was just a constant, a fact of life.

His eyes searched the room. Still. Silent. No one there. Usually the professor, at least, would be out here reading or making illustrations of the sea life that scuttled and swam through the waters outside.

Of course, after his outburst a few days ago, during which he’d snapped at the professor to leave him be for once, Nemo was not surprised that Aronnax was keeping his distance. Usually around this time they would have been dining together, discussing the day’s discoveries and where they aspired to travel to next. But since the South Pole, Nemo had begun to decline dinner. Since the battle with the squids, he’d begun to decline breakfast and lunch as well.

He wasn’t an idiot. He knew he had to eat eventually. And he had eaten at least once since last week. He was certain of that. But with his mind so foggy, drugging himself into a false sleep every few hours, it was hard to keep track of time, or of human necessities.

Besides, during times like these, when he was overwhelmed and his mind was failing him, he preferred to be hungry. The sharp pains in his stomach would keep him from going completely numb, and would give him an anchor to focus his attention on, so his thoughts would not spin off into some horrifying pattern of grief and rage again. The trouble was, given enough time without food, he’d begin to get weak and listless, and that didn’t help him at all.

Although maybe it would put him to sleep. There was always that to consider. As it was he hadn’t eaten anything in – he checked the clock again. He didn’t know how long it had been. His best estimate was around eighty-four hours, judging by how badly his stomach was aching. It was the sort of pain that was almost sickening, and would keep him from desiring to eat for at least another day. Not that he would have tried, anyway.

He traced the keys again. Music was supposed to help him. When he was at his organ, he felt – if not peace, then some sort of catharsis. But now he didn’t even seem to be able to play properly. His head was stuffed with clouds, his heart was empty, and time didn’t seem to be working the way it should.

He tried again, his throat constricting even though he didn’t really seem to feel anything at all. His hand slipped – he hit four sour notes in a row, paused, and took several deep breaths.

This was his own composition. His own. He knew how to play this.

He started again. Again his hands raced across the keys and again they ran afoul of the proper notes. He stopped. Tried again. Stopped.

On his fifth try a jolt of frustration and rage overtook him and he slammed both fists against the keyboard, sending a single cacophonous wail of sound vibrating through his aching body and reverberating through the room and the ship beyond. He stood there, catching his breath, waiting for the silence that he knew would follow.

It did, leaving Nemo with a sharp pain in his chest that he wished he could claw out. Music was what he used to fill the void so he didn’t have to _think_ , and even his music was deserting him now.

Perhaps he was losing his mind?

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was spring, the time when things began anew. His daughters had both been born in the spring. Srishti’s birthday would be tomorrow. Wouldn’t it? April 28th…

He had forgotten, and somehow this new realization made things all the worse. How old would she be? He thought back. He’d been on the ship nearly a decade, nine years total. It had taken a year to construct, so… fifteen? Sixteen? He didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. She would have been nearly grown up by now.

He shivered. The professor’s room was full of ghosts. Aronnax didn’t know that the earliest designs for the _Nautilus_ had dated back far, far before the demise of Nemo’s family. Back then, Nemo still had dreams. He was going to secure the safety and freedom of India, build a wondrous ship that could travel the seas like a bird in flight, and take his family all across the world.

They would have had a life together of beauty, and discovery, and marvel.

But then his family had died, and India’s hope had been crushed alongside Nemo’s army, and the designs for the _Nautilus_ took a much darker turn as she transformed from a haven to a weapon. But Nemo had never struck his daughters’ room from the plans. He had never been able to bring himself to get rid of it, and so it stayed, a lovely little monument, empty and waiting for some companion who would never come.

Until Aronnax.

Nemo tilted his head back, closing his weary eyes. Aronnax had, for a time, changed so many things that Nemo had considered certainties, but no longer. If the professor did not hate Nemo now, he would in a matter of weeks or months. It was better to suture that wound as soon as possible. Better that they both moved on, and quickly.

He felt a presence beside him, a soft and human warmth. For a moment his mind flashed back to Srishti, to the time when she used to creep up onto the bench beside him to watch him play. There was a split second when he half-expected her to surprise him with a hug. His heart tightened, but when he opened his eyes he was faced not with the playful expression of a child or the ghostly black eyes of a teenage girl. Instead it was the man he’d been avoiding, looking at him with a touch of concern.

“Aronnax,” he said coolly. His voice sounded hoarse to his own ears.

“Captain. I came to look at your shoulder. I want to make sure it’s healing up properly.”

Soberly, Nemo held up his arm and allowed the professor to inspect and gently prod the joint of his shoulder, making sure there was no stiffness, no swelling. His touch was deft, professional, but there were none of the subtle lingering gestures that would have happened only a few weeks ago. “Does it hurt?”

“No,” Nemo lied. It _did_ hurt, though, and as he looked at Aronnax he had to fight a powerful urge to collapse, to fall into the professor’s arms and sleep, and sleep, and sleep. “Is that all?”

“Yes,” Aronnax replied. He got up to leave, but then seemed to hesitate. “I heard you playing just a while ago. Is there something… wrong with your instrument?”

Nemo said nothing.

“I mean… you’ve been a bit quiet since the South Pole. I barely see you at all anymore. If you spend any more time in your cabin I might start to think you’re hibernating like an Arctic puffin!”

Nemo still did not respond, just turned back to his organ.

“Puffins… don’t hibernate, of course. I was joking. They migrate. I assume you knew that…”

“I did,” Nemo said, gritting his teeth. “Do you have anything else to say?”

“No,” Aronnax replied softly. “I don’t.”

With that he finally left, and Nemo leaned his head against the cool paneling of the organ, trying to stop the wave of dizziness that had come up on him suddenly. He remembered the South Pole. He remembered being trapped, and fighting for days against an impenetrable wall of ice, and how after the sixth day he had received news that several of his friends were dying or dead, and that Aronnax had, last the stewards had checked, already suffocated.

After this, he had given the commands to break through the ice barrier, rise as quickly as possible, and open all portals to full immediately upon surfacing. Then he had left his companions, shut himself in one of the small closets near the engine room, and screamed until he fainted from fatigue and lack of air.

Suresh found him about an hour later and told him all was well. There were no deaths aboard, and they were heading north through the Atlantic. That was his last clear memory. Everything since then had been a bit blurred around the edges. Maybe something had snapped in his brain when he passed out, but he doubted it.

He straightened, steeling himself. He couldn’t go on like this indefinitely. He knew. He could cut Aronnax out of his life, give up on his music, and cease all exploration but he knew he wasn’t going to survive long with this darkness in his head. He might last one week, or a month, or maybe even several months, but eventually this was going to kill him. He had known it for a while. This world tour with Aronnax was meant to be his last. But then the professor had shown him a closeness and an understanding that… for a while, had _meant_ something. For a while it had brought life and hope to a place where Nemo had none at all.

But it was over. And now Nemo was assured he would die, either by a force of nature, or by his health finally giving out on him, or, at the very worst, when he could no longer bear it and did it with his own hand.

Before he died, though, he wanted his family’s vengeance to be secure. He was heading north. Up there, the country he despised more than any other would patrol his sea with their mechanisms of war. He could go to them. He’d already decimated one. Others… others were there for the taking, if Nemo could find them, and he could.

He got up, pain lancing through his knee and up his leg. He was unsteady on his feet, but he was standing. He checked the map. Exactly _where_ his enemies would be was only a guess, but he had a pretty good idea.

He’d let the _Nautilus_ drift, but now he gave orders to the wheelhouse to head a course for the north Atlantic. They’d be out there somewhere.

As he limped towards the portal, his heart flooded with a sudden, powerful emotion, crushing the numb and aching feeling into nothingness. Anger. His daughters were not with him, his wife would never get to visit the museums of Brazil and Germany that she had so longed to see. He’d never set foot again in his birth country – _his_ country, the home he’d cherished and fought and bled for. All of that, _all_ of it was stolen from him.

He had thought his body was empty of everything, but somewhere, there was fuel for his rage, and it struck and ignited like a parched forest. There he stood, trembling in front of the ocean where he’d lain dormant for so long, plotting a course for his own damnation and ready to welcome the jaws of death whenever they closed upon his throat.


End file.
